Contrasts
Turn we our eyes upon two homes; not lying side by side, but wide
apart, though both within easy range and reach of the great city of
London.
The first is situated in the green and wooded country near Norwood. It
is not a mansion; it is of no pretensions as to size; but it is
beautifully arranged, and tastefully kept. The lawn, the soft, smooth
slope, the flower-garden, the clumps of trees where graceful forms of
ash and willow are not wanting, the conservatory, the rustic verandah
with sweet-smelling creeping plants entwined about the pillars, the
simple exterior of the house, the well-ordered offices, though all upon
the diminutive scale proper to a mere cottage, bespeak an amount of
elegant comfort within, that might serve for a palace. This indication
is not without warrant; for, within, it is a house of refinement and
luxury. Rich colours, excellently blended, meet the eye at every turn;
in the furniture—its proportions admirably devised to suit the shapes
and sizes of the small rooms; on the walls; upon the floors; tingeing
and subduing the light that comes in through the odd glass doors and
windows here and there. There are a few choice prints and pictures too;
in quaint nooks and recesses there is no want of books; and there are
games of skill and chance set forth on tables—fantastic chessmen, dice,
backgammon, cards, and billiards.
And yet amidst this opulence of comfort, there is something in the
general air that is not well. Is it that the carpets and the cushions
are too soft and noiseless, so that those who move or repose among them
seem to act by stealth? Is it that the prints and pictures do not
commemorate great thoughts or deeds, or render nature in the Poetry of
landscape, hall, or hut, but are of one voluptuous cast—mere shows of
form and colour—and no more? Is it that the books have all their gold
outside, and that the titles of the greater part qualify them to be
companions of the prints and pictures? Is it that the completeness and
the beauty of the place are here and there belied by an affectation of
humility, in some unimportant and inexpensive regard, which is as false
as the face of the too truly painted portrait hanging yonder, or its
original at breakfast in his easy chair below it? Or is it that, with
the daily breath of that original and master of all here, there issues
forth some subtle portion of himself, which gives a vague expression of
himself to everything about him?
It is Mr Carker the Manager who sits in the easy chair. A gaudy parrot
in a burnished cage upon the table tears at the wires with her beak,
and goes walking, upside down, in its dome-top, shaking her house and
screeching; but Mr Carker is indifferent to the bird, and looks with a
musing smile at a picture on the opposite wall.
“A most extraordinary accidental likeness, certainly,” says he.
Perhaps it is a Juno; perhaps a Potiphar’s Wife”; perhaps some scornful
Nymph—according as the Picture Dealers found the market, when they
christened it. It is the figure of a woman, supremely handsome, who,
turning away, but with her face addressed to the spectator, flashes her
proud glance upon him.
It is like Edith.
With a passing gesture of his hand at the picture—what! a menace? No;
yet something like it. A wave as of triumph? No; yet more like that. An
insolent salute wafted from his lips? No; yet like that too—he resumes
his breakfast, and calls to the chafing and imprisoned bird, who coming
down into a pendant gilded hoop within the cage, like a great
wedding-ring, swings in it, for his delight.
The second home is on the other side of London, near to where the busy
great north road of bygone days is silent and almost deserted, except
by wayfarers who toil along on foot. It is a poor small house, barely
and sparely furnished, but very clean; and there is even an attempt to
decorate it, shown in the homely flowers trained about the porch and in
the narrow garden. The neighbourhood in which it stands has as little
of the country to recommend it, as it has of the town. It is neither of
the town nor country. The former, like the giant in his travelling
boots, has made a stride and passed it, and has set his
brick-and-mortar heel a long way in advance; but the intermediate space
between the giant’s feet, as yet, is only blighted country, and not
town; and, here, among a few tall chimneys belching smoke all day and
night, and among the brick-fields and the lanes where turf is cut, and
where the fences tumble down, and where the dusty nettles grow, and
where a scrap or two of hedge may yet be seen, and where the
bird-catcher still comes occasionally, though he swears every time to
come no more—this second home is to be found.”
She who inhabits it, is she who left the first in her devotion to an
outcast brother. She withdrew from that home its redeeming spirit, and
from its master’s breast his solitary angel: but though his liking for
her is gone, after this ungrateful slight as he considers it; and
though he abandons her altogether in return, an old idea of her is not
quite forgotten even by him. Let her flower-garden, in which he never
sets his foot, but which is yet maintained, among all his costly
alterations, as if she had quitted it but yesterday, bear witness!
Harriet Carker has changed since then, and on her beauty there has
fallen a heavier shade than Time of his unassisted self can cast,
all-potent as he is—the shadow of anxiety and sorrow, and the daily
struggle of a poor existence. But it is beauty still; and still a
gentle, quiet, and retiring beauty that must be sought out, for it
cannot vaunt itself; if it could, it would be what it is, no more.
Yes. This slight, small, patient figure, neatly dressed in homely
stuffs, and indicating nothing but the dull, household virtues, that
have so little in common with the received idea of heroism and
greatness, unless, indeed, any ray of them should shine through the
lives of the great ones of the earth, when it becomes a constellation
and is tracked in Heaven straightway—this slight, small, patient
figure, leaning on the man still young but worn and grey, is she, his
sister, who, of all the world, went over to him in his shame and put
her hand in his, and with a sweet composure and determination, led him
hopefully upon his barren way.
“It is early, John,” she said. “Why do you go so early?”
“Not many minutes earlier than usual, Harriet. If I have the time to
spare, I should like, I think—it’s a fancy—to walk once by the house
where I took leave of him.”
“I wish I had ever seen or known him, John.”
“It is better as it is, my dear, remembering his fate.”
“But I could not regret it more, though I had known him. Is not your
sorrow mine? And if I had, perhaps you would feel that I was a better
companion to you in speaking about him, than I may seem now.”
“My dearest sister! Is there anything within the range of rejoicing or
regret, in which I am not sure of your companionship?”
“I hope you think not, John, for surely there is nothing!”
“How could you be better to me, or nearer to me then, than you are in
this, or anything?” said her brother. “I feel that you did know him,
Harriet, and that you shared my feelings towards him.”
She drew the hand which had been resting on his shoulder, round his
neck, and answered, with some hesitation:
“No, not quite.”
“True, true!” he said; “you think I might have done him no harm if I
had allowed myself to know him better?”
“Think! I know it.”
“Designedly, Heaven knows I would not,” he replied, shaking his head
mournfully; “but his reputation was too precious to be perilled by such
association. Whether you share that knowledge, or do not, my dear—”
“I do not,” she said quietly.
“It is still the truth, Harriet, and my mind is lighter when I think of
him for that which made it so much heavier then.” He checked himself in
his tone of melancholy, and smiled upon her as he said “Good-bye!”
“Good-bye, dear John! In the evening, at the old time and place, I
shall meet you as usual on your way home. Good-bye.”
The cordial face she lifted up to his to kiss him, was his home, his
life, his universe, and yet it was a portion of his punishment and
grief; for in the cloud he saw upon it—though serene and calm as any
radiant cloud at sunset—and in the constancy and devotion of her life,
and in the sacrifice she had made of ease, enjoyment, and hope, he saw
the bitter fruits of his old crime, for ever ripe and fresh.
She stood at the door looking after him, with her hands loosely clasped
in each other, as he made his way over the frowzy and uneven patch of
ground which lay before their house, which had once (and not long ago)
been a pleasant meadow, and was now a very waste, with a disorderly
crop of beginnings of mean houses, rising out of the rubbish, as if
they had been unskilfully sown there. Whenever he looked back—as once
or twice he did—her cordial face shone like a light upon his heart; but
when he plodded on his way, and saw her not, the tears were in her eyes
as she stood watching him.
Her pensive form was not long idle at the door. There was daily duty to
discharge, and daily work to do—for such commonplace spirits that are
not heroic, often work hard with their hands—and Harriet was soon busy
with her household tasks. These discharged, and the poor house made
quite neat and orderly, she counted her little stock of money, with an
anxious face, and went out thoughtfully to buy some necessaries for
their table, planning and conniving, as she went, how to save. So
sordid are the lives of such low natures, who are not only not heroic
to their valets and waiting-women, but have neither valets nor
waiting-women to be heroic to withal!
While she was absent, and there was no one in the house, there
approached it by a different way from that the brother had taken, a
gentleman, a very little past his prime of life perhaps, but of a
healthy florid hue, an upright presence, and a bright clear aspect,
that was gracious and good-humoured. His eyebrows were still black, and
so was much of his hair; the sprinkling of grey observable among the
latter, graced the former very much, and showed his broad frank brow
and honest eyes to great advantage.
After knocking once at the door, and obtaining no response, this
gentleman sat down on a bench in the little porch to wait. A certain
skilful action of his fingers as he hummed some bars, and beat time on
the seat beside him, seemed to denote the musician; and the
extraordinary satisfaction he derived from humming something very slow
and long, which had no recognisable tune, seemed to denote that he was
a scientific one.
The gentleman was still twirling a theme, which seemed to go round and
round and round, and in and in and in, and to involve itself like a
corkscrew twirled upon a table, without getting any nearer to anything,
when Harriet appeared returning. He rose up as she advanced, and stood
with his head uncovered.
“You are come again, Sir!” she said, faltering.
“I take that liberty,” he answered. “May I ask for five minutes of your
leisure?”
After a moment’s hesitation, she opened the door, and gave him
admission to the little parlour. The gentleman sat down there, drew his
chair to the table over against her, and said, in a voice that
perfectly corresponded to his appearance, and with a simplicity that
was very engaging:
“Miss Harriet, you cannot be proud. You signified to me, when I called
t’other morning, that you were. Pardon me if I say that I looked into
your face while you spoke, and that it contradicted you. I look into it
again,” he added, laying his hand gently on her arm, for an instant,
“and it contradicts you more and more.”
She was somewhat confused and agitated, and could make no ready answer.
“It is the mirror of truth,” said her visitor, “and gentleness. Excuse
my trusting to it, and returning.”
His manner of saying these words, divested them entirely of the
character of compliments. It was so plain, grave, unaffected, and
sincere, that she bent her head, as if at once to thank him, and
acknowledge his sincerity.
“The disparity between our ages,” said the gentleman, “and the
plainness of my purpose, empower me, I am glad to think, to speak my
mind. That is my mind; and so you see me for the second time.”
“There is a kind of pride, Sir,” she returned, after a moment’s
silence, “or what may be supposed to be pride, which is mere duty. I
hope I cherish no other.”
“For yourself,” he said.
“For myself.”
“But—pardon me—” suggested the gentleman. “For your brother John?”
“Proud of his love, I am,” said Harriet, looking full upon her visitor,
and changing her manner on the instant—not that it was less composed
and quiet, but that there was a deep impassioned earnestness in it that
made the very tremble in her voice a part of her firmness, “and proud
of him. Sir, you who strangely know the story of his life, and repeated
it to me when you were here last—”
“Merely to make my way into your confidence,” interposed the gentleman.
“For heaven’s sake, don’t suppose—”
“I am sure,” she said, “you revived it, in my hearing, with a kind and
good purpose. I am quite sure of it.”
“I thank you,” returned her visitor, pressing her hand hastily. “I am
much obliged to you. You do me justice, I assure you. You were going to
say, that I, who know the story of John Carker’s life—”
“May think it pride in me,” she continued, “when I say that I am proud
of him! I am. You know the time was, when I was not—when I could not
be—but that is past. The humility of many years, the uncomplaining
expiation, the true repentance, the terrible regret, the pain I know he
has even in my affection, which he thinks has cost me dear, though
Heaven knows I am happy, but for his sorrow I—oh, Sir, after what I
have seen, let me conjure you, if you are in any place of power, and
are ever wronged, never, for any wrong, inflict a punishment that
cannot be recalled; while there is a GOD above us to work changes in
the hearts He made.”
“Your brother is an altered man,” returned the gentleman,
compassionately. “I assure you I don’t doubt it.”
“He was an altered man when he did wrong,” said Harriet. “He is an
altered man again, and is his true self now, believe me, Sir.”
“But we go on,” said her visitor, rubbing his forehead, in an absent
manner, with his hand, and then drumming thoughtfully on the table, “we
go on in our clockwork routine, from day to day, and can’t make out, or
follow, these changes. They—they’re a metaphysical sort of thing. We—we
haven’t leisure for it. We—we haven’t courage. They’re not taught at
schools or colleges, and we don’t know how to set about it. In short,
we are so d——d business-like,” said the gentleman, walking to the
window, and back, and sitting down again, in a state of extreme
dissatisfaction and vexation.
“I am sure,” said the gentleman, rubbing his forehead again; and
drumming on the table as before, “I have good reason to believe that a
jog-trot life, the same from day to day, would reconcile one to
anything. One don’t see anything, one don’t hear anything, one don’t
know anything; that’s the fact. We go on taking everything for granted,
and so we go on, until whatever we do, good, bad, or indifferent, we do
from habit. Habit is all I shall have to report, when I am called upon
to plead to my conscience, on my death-bed. ‘Habit,’ says I; ‘I was
deaf, dumb, blind, and paralytic, to a million things, from habit.’
‘Very business-like indeed, Mr What’s-your-name,’ says Conscience, ‘but
it won’t do here!’”
The gentleman got up and walked to the window again and back: seriously
uneasy, though giving his uneasiness this peculiar expression.
“Miss Harriet,” he said, resuming his chair, “I wish you would let me
serve you. Look at me; I ought to look honest, for I know I am so, at
present. Do I?”
“Yes,” she answered with a smile.
“I believe every word you have said,” he returned. “I am full of
self-reproach that I might have known this and seen this, and known you
and seen you, any time these dozen years, and that I never have. I
hardly know how I ever got here—creature that I am, not only of my own
habit, but of other people’s! But having done so, let me do something.
I ask it in all honour and respect. You inspire me with both, in the
highest degree. Let me do something.”
“We are contented, Sir.”
“No, no, not quite,” returned the gentleman. “I think not quite. There
are some little comforts that might smooth your life, and his. And
his!” he repeated, fancying that had made some impression on her. “I
have been in the habit of thinking that there was nothing wanting to be
done for him; that it was all settled and over; in short, of not
thinking at all about it. I am different now. Let me do something for
him. You too,” said the visitor, with careful delicacy, “have need to
watch your health closely, for his sake, and I fear it fails.”
“Whoever you may be, Sir,” answered Harriet, raising her eyes to his
face, “I am deeply grateful to you. I feel certain that in all you say,
you have no object in the world but kindness to us. But years have
passed since we began this life; and to take from my brother any part
of what has so endeared him to me, and so proved his better
resolution—any fragment of the merit of his unassisted, obscure, and
forgotten reparation—would be to diminish the comfort it will be to him
and me, when that time comes to each of us, of which you spoke just
now. I thank you better with these tears than any words. Believe it,
pray.”
The gentleman was moved, and put the hand she held out, to his lips,
much as a tender father might kiss the hand of a dutiful child. But
more reverently.
“If the day should ever come,” said Harriet, “when he is restored, in
part, to the position he lost—”
“Restored!” cried the gentleman, quickly. “How can that be hoped for?
In whose hands does the power of any restoration lie? It is no mistake
of mine, surely, to suppose that his having gained the priceless
blessing of his life, is one cause of the animosity shown to him by his
brother.”
“You touch upon a subject that is never breathed between us; not even
between us,” said Harriet.
“I beg your forgiveness,” said the visitor. “I should have known it. I
entreat you to forget that I have done so, inadvertently. And now, as I
dare urge no more—as I am not sure that I have a right to do so—though
Heaven knows, even that doubt may be habit,” said the gentleman,
rubbing his head, as despondently as before, “let me; though a
stranger, yet no stranger; ask two favours.”
“What are they?” she inquired.
“The first, that if you should see cause to change your resolution, you
will suffer me to be as your right hand. My name shall then be at your
service; it is useless now, and always insignificant.”
“Our choice of friends,” she answered, smiling faintly, “is not so
great, that I need any time for consideration. I can promise that.”
“The second, that you will allow me sometimes, say every Monday
morning, at nine o’clock—habit again—I must be businesslike,” said the
gentleman, with a whimsical inclination to quarrel with himself on that
head, “in walking past, to see you at the door or window. I don’t ask
to come in, as your brother will be gone out at that hour. I don’t ask
to speak to you. I merely ask to see, for the satisfaction of my own
mind, that you are well, and without intrusion to remind you, by the
sight of me, that you have a friend—an elderly friend, grey-haired
already, and fast growing greyer—whom you may ever command.”
The cordial face looked up in his; confided in it; and promised.
“I understand, as before,” said the gentleman, rising, “that you
purpose not to mention my visit to John Carker, lest he should be at
all distressed by my acquaintance with his history. I am glad of it,
for it is out of the ordinary course of things, and—habit again!” said
the gentleman, checking himself impatiently, “as if there were no
better course than the ordinary course!”
With that he turned to go, and walking, bareheaded, to the outside of
the little porch, took leave of her with such a happy mixture of
unconstrained respect and unaffected interest, as no breeding could
have taught, no truth mistrusted, and nothing but a pure and single
heart expressed.
Many half-forgotten emotions were awakened in the sister’s mind by this
visit. It was so very long since any other visitor had crossed their
threshold; it was so very long since any voice of apathy had made sad
music in her ears; that the stranger’s figure remained present to her,
hours afterwards, when she sat at the window, plying her needle; and
his words seemed newly spoken, again and again. He had touched the
spring that opened her whole life; and if she lost him for a short
space, it was only among the many shapes of the one great recollection
of which that life was made.
Musing and working by turns; now constraining herself to be steady at
her needle for a long time together, and now letting her work fall,
unregarded, on her lap, and straying wheresoever her busier thoughts
led, Harriet Carker found the hours glide by her, and the day steal on.
The morning, which had been bright and clear, gradually became
overcast; a sharp wind set in; the rain fell heavily; and a dark mist
drooping over the distant town, hid it from the view.
She often looked with compassion, at such a time, upon the stragglers
who came wandering into London, by the great highway hard by, and who,
footsore and weary, and gazing fearfully at the huge town before them,
as if foreboding that their misery there would be but as a drop of
water in the sea, or as a grain of sea-sand on the shore, went
shrinking on, cowering before the angry weather, and looking as if the
very elements rejected them. Day after day, such travellers crept past,
but always, as she thought, in one direction—always towards the town.
Swallowed up in one phase or other of its immensity, towards which they
seemed impelled by a desperate fascination, they never returned. Food
for the hospitals, the churchyards, the prisons, the river, fever,
madness, vice, and death,—they passed on to the monster, roaring in the
distance, and were lost.
[Illustration]
The chill wind was howling, and the rain was falling, and the day was
darkening moodily, when Harriet, raising her eyes from the work on
which she had long since been engaged with unremitting constancy, saw
one of these travellers approaching.
A woman. A solitary woman of some thirty years of age; tall;
well-formed; handsome; miserably dressed; the soil of many country
roads in varied weather—dust, chalk, clay, gravel—clotted on her grey
cloak by the streaming wet; no bonnet on her head, nothing to defend
her rich black hair from the rain, but a torn handkerchief; with the
fluttering ends of which, and with her hair, the wind blinded her so
that she often stopped to push them back, and look upon the way she was
going.
She was in the act of doing so, when Harriet observed her. As her
hands, parting on her sunburnt forehead, swept across her face, and
threw aside the hindrances that encroached upon it, there was a
reckless and regardless beauty in it: a dauntless and depraved
indifference to more than weather: a carelessness of what was cast upon
her bare head from Heaven or earth: that, coupled with her misery and
loneliness, touched the heart of her fellow-woman. She thought of all
that was perverted and debased within her, no less than without: of
modest graces of the mind, hardened and steeled, like these attractions
of the person; of the many gifts of the Creator flung to the winds like
the wild hair; of all the beautiful ruin upon which the storm was
beating and the night was coming.
Thinking of this, she did not turn away with a delicate indignation—too
many of her own compassionate and tender sex too often do—but pitied
her.
Her fallen sister came on, looking far before her, trying with her
eager eyes to pierce the mist in which the city was enshrouded, and
glancing, now and then, from side to side, with the bewildered—and
uncertain aspect of a stranger. Though her tread was bold and
courageous, she was fatigued, and after a moment of irresolution,—sat
down upon a heap of stones; seeking no shelter from the rain, but
letting it rain on her as it would.
She was now opposite the house; raising her head after resting it for a
moment on both hands, her eyes met those of Harriet.
In a moment, Harriet was at the door; and the other, rising from her
seat at her beck, came slowly, and with no conciliatory look, towards
her.
“Why do you rest in the rain?” said Harriet, gently.
“Because I have no other resting-place,” was the reply.
“But there are many places of shelter near here. This,” referring to
the little porch, “is better than where you were. You are very welcome
to rest here.”
The wanderer looked at her, in doubt and surprise, but without any
expression of thankfulness; and sitting down, and taking off one of her
worn shoes to beat out the fragments of stone and dust that were
inside, showed that her foot was cut and bleeding.
Harriet uttering an expression of pity, the traveller looked up with a
contemptuous and incredulous smile.
“Why, what’s a torn foot to such as me?” she said. “And what’s a torn
foot in such as me, to such as you?”
“Come in and wash it,” answered Harriet, mildly, “and let me give you
something to bind it up.”
The woman caught her arm, and drawing it before her own eyes, hid them
against it, and wept. Not like a woman, but like a stern man surprised
into that weakness; with a violent heaving of her breast, and struggle
for recovery, that showed how unusual the emotion was with her.
She submitted to be led into the house, and, evidently more in
gratitude than in any care for herself, washed and bound the injured
place. Harriet then put before her fragments of her own frugal dinner,
and when she had eaten of them, though sparingly, besought her, before
resuming her road (which she showed her anxiety to do), to dry her
clothes before the fire. Again, more in gratitude than with any
evidence of concern in her own behalf, she sat down in front of it, and
unbinding the handkerchief about her head, and letting her thick wet
hair fall down below her waist, sat drying it with the palms of her
hands, and looking at the blaze.
“I daresay you are thinking,” she said, lifting her head suddenly,
“that I used to be handsome, once. I believe I was—I know I was—Look
here!”
She held up her hair roughly with both hands; seizing it as if she
would have torn it out; then, threw it down again, and flung it back as
though it were a heap of serpents.
“Are you a stranger in this place?” asked Harriet.
“A stranger!” she returned, stopping between each short reply, and
looking at the fire. “Yes. Ten or a dozen years a stranger. I have had
no almanack where I have been. Ten or a dozen years. I don’t know this
part. It’s much altered since I went away.”
“Have you been far?”
“Very far. Months upon months over the sea, and far away even then. I
have been where convicts go,” she added, looking full upon her
entertainer. “I have been one myself.”
“Heaven help you and forgive you!” was the gentle answer.
“Ah! Heaven help me and forgive me!” she returned, nodding her head at
the fire. “If man would help some of us a little more, God would
forgive us all the sooner perhaps.”
But she was softened by the earnest manner, and the cordial face so
full of mildness and so free from judgment, of her, and said, less
hardily:
“We may be about the same age, you and me. If I am older, it is not
above a year or two. Oh think of that!”
She opened her arms, as though the exhibition of her outward form would
show the moral wretch she was; and letting them drop at her sides, hung
down her head.
“There is nothing we may not hope to repair; it is never too late to
amend,” said Harriet. “You are penitent?”
“No,” she answered. “I am not! I can’t be. I am no such thing. Why
should I be penitent, and all the world go free? They talk to me of my
penitence. Who’s penitent for the wrongs that have been done to me?”
She rose up, bound her handkerchief about her head, and turned to move
away.
“Where are you going?” said Harriet.
“Yonder,” she answered, pointing with her hand. “To London.”
“Have you any home to go to?”
“I think I have a mother. She’s as much a mother, as her dwelling is a
home,” she answered with a bitter laugh.
“Take this,” cried Harriet, putting money in her hand. “Try to do well.
It is very little, but for one day it may keep you from harm.”
“Are you married?” said the other, faintly, as she took it.
“No. I live here with my brother. We have not much to spare, or I would
give you more.”
“Will you let me kiss you?”
Seeing no scorn or repugnance in her face, the object of her charity
bent over her as she asked the question, and pressed her lips against
her cheek. Once more she caught her arm, and covered her eyes with it;
and then was gone.
Gone into the deepening night, and howling wind, and pelting rain;
urging her way on towards the mist-enshrouded city where the blurred
lights gleamed; and with her black hair, and disordered head-gear,
fluttering round her reckless face.